Living a life with music very much the soundtrack to it has its positives and negative.
What They Say:
Rewind to the 1990s with Ardden’s new grunge-era series, Mixtape! When asked to escort cute (and interested) Adrienne to the end-of-summer bash, Jim Abbot’s final year of high school is shaping up to be the best ever. But the unexpected return of unrequited love Siobhan to town forces Jim to choose between them, and the impact of that decision will be greater than he could ever imagine.
The Review:
Music is easily the soundtrack of our life and there’s a lot to take from it when it comes to how we feel at an age, at a time in our lives and the intensity of feeling and emotion. Mixtape feeds into that heavily and it goes to a time very familiar to me as well, though off by a couple of years. Told as a flashback tale as we see from the opening panel, we’re taken back to 1990 to follow seventeen year old Jim, a high school student that’s going through the motions in life a fair bit and is mostly just living his life through music in the various tapes that he has. He’s not exactly obsessive about it, but there’s that element to it there where even his friends call him out by it, knowing that he’s spending his time with them rather than doing anything else. And with it being summer, he’s gotten a bit more introverted in a way since he’s just not interested in doing the whole high school social thing before school kicks in again.
Of course, Jim’s going to get roped into the last of the parties to happen and he’s getting it even worse as he’s told to pick up someone on the way, a friend of a friend from within school who had been overseas for awhile. To make matters worse, the girl, Adrienne, is known just by her body type more than anything else. Naturally, while she’s been overseas, she’s gone from fat to thin and pretty desirable without really realizing what she’s become. And for Jim, when he picks her up, he’s not smitten but events keep pushing him easily in that direction. And especially when it comes to music as she’s managed to get around a bit and knows the groups he does that are gaining in popularity but aren’t the huge names they would become for the most part. With these two, there’s definite chemistry to be had in watching them here.
Of course, things aren’t going to be easy, even if Adrienne is making a move to get closer to him and taking things further than he could have ever expected. While he is focusing on a bit of an unrealistic girl elsewhere at the party, it does feel unfortunately right with how Jim handles the situation. While he has something that could be amazing right in front of him, and someone without much in the way of recent in-school baggage at that, he doesn’t quite see it and feels like it might be something that traps him. And even the way he deals with things with Adrienne isn’t a surprise in a way since he’s pretty blunt and almost brutal with it. It’s strange to think that you can understand his reasoning and all, but it’s still incredibly frustrating to watch someone go through something like this.
In Summary:
Mixtape definitely sets its tone by the music that the cast is into and I do like that they get little blocks here and there where favorite bands and the like are tagged with them. With it being from a time I come from, having graduated back in 1989, I can certainly appreciate the variety of groups used and the way they were tied together here. But I also like that the bands themselves became a part of the dialogue as it’s the kind of thing that you talk about at that age when you’re really into it. But it doesn’t dominate so much that it detracts and distracts from everything else. What I came away with at the end, and upon revisiting the work again a few days later, is that the music was less important and the characters themselves stood out well, making me want to see more of where they go. This is a pretty fun black and white book that gets its pacing going well after it deals with the initial setup and hits a certain kind of nostalgia for me without putting a massive rosy spin on it.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
